How Long?

That was the prophet Habakkuk. Twenty-five hundred years ago.

Just as before, the cicadas kept on singing their song, dry and hoarse. There was not a breath of wind. Just as before, a fly kept buzzing around the priest’s face. In the world outside there was no change. A man had died, but there was no change.
“So it has come to this….” He shivered as he clutched the bars. “So it has come to this….”
Yet his perplexity did not come from the event that had happened so suddenly. What he could not understand was the stillness of the courtyard, the voice of the cicada, the whirling wings of the flies. A man had died. Yet the outside world went on as if nothing had happened. Could anything be more crazy? Was this martyrdom? Why are you silent? Here this one-eyed man has died—and for you. You ought to know. Why does this stillness continue? This noonday stillness. The sound of the flies—this crazy thing, this cruel business. And you avert your face as though indifferent. This…this I cannot bear.

That was Shusaku Endo. Fifty years ago.

Silence is a Great Book. I am amazed I have only now read it for the first time. It’s a book that I have heard about sporadically for decades, but beyond the crucial moment toward the end of the book, I knew nothing about it. Nobody ever told me that its greatness is much larger than the tough moral decision to which the story leads.

The Big Moment: a Portuguese priest is faced with the decision: apostatize or let other innocent people be tortured. That is one of those decisions you really don’t want to have to make in life. But, framed purely a story leading to that decision, the book seems much smaller than it is.

There is a triumphalist strain of Christianity that makes it seem like becoming a Christian means moving from one spiritual high to another. Sure, we know there are spiritual lows but, gosh, all you need is a retreat or a camp or a really great worship team at church to lift you out of those spiritual lows and set you back on the mountain top. If you have a problem, you pray. Problem solved. If you know someone who is feeling down, you tell them you are praying for them. Problem solved. If the pesky problem just doesn’t go away, pray harder.

But, what if the problem doesn’t go away? This is where it gets sticky for many Christians. What if God is…silent.

And like the sea God was silent. His silence continued.
No, no! I shook my head. If God does not exist, how can man endure the monotony of the sea and its cruel lack of emotion? (But supposing…of course, supposing, I mean.) From the deepest core of my being yet another voice made itself heard in a whisper. Supposing God does not exist…
This was a frightening fancy. If he does not exist, how absurd the whole thing becomes.

There is the test of faith. When God is silent, do you still believe God is there?

This test of faith is a tough one for the modern Christian Church, much like it has been for the church in all ages. “The law is paralyzed and justice never goes forth.” What then? Surely God will act, right? Surely justice will prevail, right? Why is God silent?

Habakkuk complains to God about the injustice he sees in his land. God finally answers. The Babylonians roar in and things get much, much worse. What then?

Silence wrestles with this question in unflinching prose.

“You will not meet with greater suffering than this,” said the priest in a voice filled with earnest fervor. “The Lord will not abandon you forever. He it is who washes our wounds; his is the hand that wipes away our blood. The Lord will not be silent forever.”

The protagonist in the novel is constantly tempted with the lie of infertile soil. Japan is just not a place where Christianity can prosper. The Japanese converts don’t really believe; they have corrupted the message. There is no hope for Christianity in Japan. So there is no point even in trying. None at all. Just give up. Look for a different cure. “Love the Lord Your God” is not enough. “Love your neighbor as yourself” is not enough. Christians, if they want to do something productive in this land, must find something else to do. There are other problems, you know. It’s not really about love and conversions. It’s about making people’s lives better. Abandon the Christian message of Love and do something tangible, something useful.

That is the counsel of despair. That is the counsel of a loss of faith. It is easy to say you have faith when things are going well. It is easy to say you have faith when God is doing what we want Him to do. But, what do we do when God is silent? What do we do when misery and injustice prevail? Do we still trust God then? Do we still believe that God is sovereign, that He is in control?

“So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.” Why faith, hope and love? Faith that even though God is silent, He is still there. Hope that God will not be silent forever. And love? There it is again. Love. Love God. Love Your Neighbor. “Do this and you will live.”

What do we do when God is silent? Well, read Silence. And Habakkuk:

I will take my stand at my watchpost
and station myself on the tower,
and look out to see what he will say to me,
and what I will answer concerning my complaint.